Turbowolf | Interview

We’re very into the hidden world so there’s definitely that in the album, even if it’s not obvious or apparent, we like to have secrets for people to discover and muse upon.

Turbowolf are simply unstoppable right now. Their second album is packed with all the mad mysticism we’d expect, and it’s delivered with their classic brand of pummelling psychedelia. We thought it was time for a catch up with frontman Chris Georgiadis.

It’s all kicking off for you over the next few months; album, tour, you must be immensely excited…

I feel great. It’s always a good time when you’ve made the album and can then enjoy it slowly coming out to the public in dribs and drabs. The record is going to drop on the 6th April, then we’ve got loads of touring to do. Now it’s just all about making the live shows happen, getting out there, travelling, meeting people and doing all that stuff. It goes in phases being in a band, you go through a phase of writing and recording, then you have the other side which is getting out there and playing live. It’s cool to be on the next phase now, we’ll see what happens this year.

Your singles just keep getting better, what can we expect from whole the record?

Well, I think what we tried to do was make it bigger in every way, so it’s more expansive. If anyone out there is familiar with our first album, this new one pushes it further in all the directions, the gnarlier louder bits are more gnarly, and the psychedelic trippy bits are a bit more trippy. In every way we’ve expanded the whole sound. We obviously learnt a lot of lessons making the first album so we were able to take them into it with us. It’s a nice benchmark of where we’re at now, what we’re into and what we want to make. That’s always been the main thing for us, we always just make whatever what we want to make and don’t let anything get in the way of that like trends or fashion.

Ancient Egyptian mythology has played a part in your music for a while now, any unusual new influences on the album?

Ah yeah, you mean like esoteric kind of stuff. There’s always an undercurrent of mysticism with everything we do. We’re very into the hidden world so there’s definitely that in the album. We’ve even got a bit of the author Graham Hancock doing a bit of spoken word on our new album actually, which is really cool because we had the chance to meet him a few years ago. He’s really into exploring the mysteries of the ancient world, so that will feature in the album, even if it’s not obvious or apparent. We like to have secrets for people to discover and muse upon.

A few years have passed since your debut, were you intent on going at your own pace with this one?

Yeah we just basically wanted to make a really great album and didn’t want to conform to the music industry’s cycle of how things should work. I think we push against that, some people would say that’s a bad idea, but for us it’s always about creating art, we make music and we make it because we feel something about it and we want to express that rather than it being a commercial product. It’s about creating something, whether it takes us a month for five years, we’re only going to put out something that we’re happy with. Once an album is out there it’s out there, you can’t bring it back in and say “I want to spend some more time on that”, so you need to make sure it’s as good as you can make it.

Interestingly, you were in a completely different position compared to when the first one came together…

Certainly making this album was a completely different experience. Just working with Tom Dalgety was the first main thing that changed, and just in the way that we could just do it in one solid block of time. This meant that we had to have all of the songs completely ready and finished before we got in the studio, obviously because in the studio time is money and you have to make every moment count. That’s why it took us so long because we had to prepare so well, that when we got in the studio we knew exactly what sounds we were using, what instruments we were using for each part, all of that stuff was worked out in advance. So there were differences, but it was just us making music in a room, which was very much the same as before.

As ever there’s an incredibly cool visual dynamic, the video for ‘Rich Gift’ for example, tell us about that?

That was a bit of a random thing really, I found out about this guy called Dax Norman who was the animator on that video through Andy’s girlfriend who found him online. So we tracked him down through an email address on a university site, he’s from Austin Texas over in the states and he’s an artist and animator. I sent him the track and said to pretty much do what you do. He makes gif loops normally so he basically sent seven minutes worth of loops. He’s definitely a person we’d like to work with again, he’s got an odd mind and we appreciate that.

There’s a tour to support the release, you’ll be playing Marble Factory here in Bristol…

Yeah, the album will be out then so that will be really cool. It’s a new place, I haven’t even been there yet so that’s also exciting. Bristol is always good for us, it’s our hometown and people come out and have a bit of a party really, it’s not really a gig, more of a celebration. The Marble Factory is on April 22nd, then we’re off to Europe after that.

You’ve played some pretty prolific shows in Bristol over the years, could you name a personal favourite?

I actually can’t think of a bad Bristol show, but the one that really sticks in my mind is the last Croft show. Just because of the emotion that was involved in that as well, we played a lot of great shows there over the years but to do the last one was really special. There was a different energy in that room, sadness mixed with joy. So that one sticks out in my mind, but more recently the one at The Fleece was amazing as was Simple Things.

You shared the stage with Death From Above 1979 at Simple Things, now you’re touring with them again…

Yeah, I mean they were one of my big influences when we first started. So to go on tour with them is a bit of a highlight of our lives really, it’s a weird thing when you’re such a fan and all of a sudden you’re out on tour with them. The nice thing about it is that it was a personal link, it wasn’t through an agent or management, it was for no other reason that they liked our band and that is just amazing, to have that mutual admiration, it’s mind blowing. I can’t wait for those shows.

Turbowolf play The Marble Factory on 22nd April

Check out the video for ‘Rich Gift’ right here:

And check out our Croft documentary featuring Turbowolf here: